


The Song of Sand

by spacemutineer



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Angst, In the Other Desert, Longing, M/M, POV Carlos, Post-Episode: e051 Rumbling, Scientist Carlos (Welcome to Night Vale)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-09
Updated: 2014-08-09
Packaged: 2018-02-12 09:45:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2105043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spacemutineer/pseuds/spacemutineer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He could call, of course. That is always an option. Cecil is only ever just a phone call away, after all. </p>
<p>One short phone call and a million, trillion miles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Song of Sand

**Author's Note:**

> [Singing sand](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yFaMsUawi4) is a real phenomenon in our world, so I imagined it would be that much more bizarre and unsettling for Carlos, alone in the weird Other Desert.
> 
> This is my first foray into Night Vale fic, but as a long-time Sherlockian, it's not my first time writing from the perspective of a scientist longing to be with someone he can't. Hope you like.

He could call, of course. That is always an option. Cecil is only ever just a phone call away, after all. 

One short phone call and a million, trillion miles. 

It is one of the rare periods of near darkness – nothing could ever be termed _night_ here – in this strange desert and it is the best time to travel. Over the limitless dunes he walks, and each step sings in a strange, low frequency groan. Scientifically, Carlos knew that desert sand could make a distinctive noise as it moved, which some observers refer to as singing. But there is an enormous difference between knowing something and being surrounded by it completely. This sand rakes at his skin and stings his eyes with every gust of wind, but it also cries out in a wounded moan with every step he takes through it.

As he has found through extensive observation and experience over these last weeks, the low, pained sound the dunes make as they are trod upon is actually two almost subsonic vibrations in a tight sequence: each footstep pressing into the loose dry sand, and then that sand sliding away down the face of the slope to settle at the distant bottom. Together, the sounds form a regular two-part rhythm for his long journey, like some desolate, inescapable heartbeat. 

He closes his eyes as he walks and tries to block it out if only for a moment with a memory. He remembers the sound of Cecil's heartbeat instead, gentle, slow, barely audible as heard through cotton t-shirt and ribcage. The delicate sensation of his pulse jostling his belly under Carlos' arm with each beat, steadily keeping him alive and warm as they fell asleep, limbs tangled in their bed. The quiet sound of Cecil's breathing as it deepened and evened out in the luxuriant dark. The music of his body and his blood and his life. 

Carlos looks down at his phone. 96% battery. It finally lost a percent. So it is in fact draining, just very very slowly. Interesting. Theories that would explain the continued survival of the phone's charge filter rapidly through Carlos' mind. It could be possible hypertrophic atmospheric ionization or, more likely, a constant flux of the magnetic poles. Perhaps there are more than the three poles he surmised. Ah, yes, that would explain it! But wouldn't all metal be stretched to the breaking point in multiple directions if that were true? Wouldn't even the iron absorbed in his body be instantaneously magnetized and sucked out through his skin, leaving him a torn, bloodless husk? 

Hmm. Maybe not supernumerary pole flux, then.

In any case, by his calculations at this rate of discharge, if he has not finished his work, his research, and found a way out of this place for himself before then, his phone will be out of power entirely in a little over... three years.

Three _years_. He's only known Cecil for two.

Three years would be one hundred and fifty-six weeks. Almost eleven hundred days. Twenty-six thousand hours. 1.6 million seconds.

Or more than a hundred million heartbeats, sounding out alone in the far somewhere on the opposite side of reality.

He dials. 

_"Hi, you’ve reached the voicemail of Cecil Palmer,"_ a tinny, chipper, months ago version of the man says. _"I'm off doing some important journalistic work. Or maybe just petting Khoshekh. But either way–"_

Carlos hangs up before the beep. If he isn't picking up, Cecil must be in the midst of his show right now. 

Or the world is ending. 

Maybe both. Carlos has no way to know. 

The scientist trudges onward. He has miles to cover before the hideous sun comes back with full force. The sand continues its singing or sobbing with each of his steps. Beads of sweat collect and trickle down his temples and the small of his back while they fail utterly at their job of keeping him cool. 

Above him, the scant few stars he can see in this meager approximation of darkness blink placidly. He tries to connect them together in some newly invented constellation, but every attempt to draw imaginary lines and pictures between the lights in the void comes to nothing no matter how hard he tries. 

They are simply too far apart.


End file.
